


Watermark

by starsarebrightlyshining



Series: Watermark [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsarebrightlyshining/pseuds/starsarebrightlyshining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Absolute crap. Percy Jackson  "The Flash" AU with multiple guest appearances :)</p><p>I update weekly on Thursdays :) (edit: hey sorry for the long hiatus! i'm psyching myself up for camp nanowrimo :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carved from the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> this is a general warning. my gifts do not lie in writing. i have a sketchy understanding of what exactly the particle accelerator did and was, because like percy jackson i tune out when they start technobabbling. but i needed to make this au happen for myself, so if you happen to enjoy this as well then awesome :)

It had been months since the Particle Accelerator exploded. _Months_.

Percy had been relaxing in the university’s pool, taking a break before another lap. He’d heard about it, of course, the Particle Accelerator—it just didn’t really cross his mind. He didn’t really get it, what it was supposed to do, what it would mean for the city. That was okay. His girlfriend, Rachel, understood it plenty and was out on the street just outside the building, protesting the whole thing. She thought it was unethical. She said so.  
It was why Percy liked her so much. She said what she meant. She said everything that came to mind, and he liked her because whatever came to mind was almost always harmless but fierce, and always purposeful. Everything about her was purposeful. She walked like that was exactly she was meant to be doing, she slammed doors and threw open the windows to let the breeze in, even in the late fall. The only careless thing about her was when she laughed, eyes crinkled and posture relaxed.

Even when they walked together, she dragged him around, like she knew where she wanted to go even when she didn’t. One morning, at the crack of dawn, she dragged herself over his hips, and he woke up as she kissed his forehead. 

“Hey,” he croaked, glancing at the digital clock on the table next to the bed. He brushed his hand behind her neck, in the familiar crook, pressing her forehead to his before licking his lips and reacting with disgust at his own breath, rank and strong. She kissed him roughly, and laughed, pulling back.

“I swear, Percy, it smells like something died in your mouth.” 

He made a face and pushed her off, gently, already on his way to the bathroom. “Why're you up so early?” he asked. “Usually I’m up early to swim. I was gonna sleep in and you ruined it.”

He could hear her smiling when she talked. “Me and the other GenW’s are protesting the Particle Accelerator today. We’re meeting early outside the building, to catch the media before they set up. I already told you, remember?”

Percy brushed his teeth, staring at the mirror. “Oh, yeah,” he said around the toothbrush. He imagined her rolling her eyes as she got out of bed, feet thumping softly against the ground. He walked back into the room, teeth clean and hair mussed, watching as she pulled a shirt over her pale white skin, dotted with fierce freckles. She looked up at him. They were young enough in their relationship for her to blush. “What?” she said. 

He grinned wickedly. “Maybe don’t put on your jeans yet.”

 

Percy didn’t have work that day, so it was just Rachel gone. She was supposed to be back at 4:00, but she texted Percy that they’d “had a lot of success” and that “lots of people were interested in what we had to say” so her group would be staying as late as there were people to talk to. Which was late. Very late. 

Percy had gotten bored at about 5:00, since he’d marathoned a whole season of Hell’s Kitchen, and he found himself driving to his university’s pool. Swimming had always helped him relax, with its steady warmth and fluid, calming movements. As he pushed himself through the water, dragging himself easily forward, he wondered how Rachel’s activism protests were going. She protested everything with her GenW group—It stood for “Generation Woman” which confused Percy. “How can you have a generation of women?” He had said. “That doesn’t make sense. The human race would fall apart. It would stop.”

“You’re missing the point,” she had said. “Generation Women doesn’t mean the generation with a lack of men. It’s supposed to speak towards a generation in which women get to step up and be involved.”

The radio crackled, still blaring hardcore Enya and Deuter. 

Percy stopped as he reached the shallow end, pulling himself heavily onto the side of the pool, breathing deeply. A flash of light outside the window caught his eye, and his gaze flicked to the city, where a stark-white beacon of light shot had shot up into the heavens. The clouds roiled around it. He stared, hauling himself up and walking slowly to the window. 

_Rachel’s protests hadn’t worked._ The Particle Accelerator was activated, and there was nothing more to be done. He sighed, heavy with Rachel’s surefire disappointment. He found his bag at the side of the pool, continuing to watch the beam of light as it blazed into the sky as he dialed Rachel’s number, ready to comfort and offer ice cream. 

And then stopped. 

He wasn’t a scientist. He never had been. He’d nearly flunked science and maths in high school, and numbers and words had always made his head hurt—the letters seemed to come right off the page, and the numbers just dissolved in his head before he could grasp at them. But he knew, without any professional training, that something was deeply wrong with the Particle Accelerator.  
The light was too bright, too beaming, too raging. It expanded, and a sort of radioactive bubble seemed to emerge—slowly, but like a train, gathering momentum and speed as it pushed itself outward. Percy could hardly stop staring; it looked like something out of a movie or a comic book. Electricity flashed around the edges of the bubble, and suddenly Percy knew he had to run as the bubble swelled, expanding at inexplicably fast speeds towards him, swallowing the city as it went, and he turned to run and in his terror slipped and fell with a giant splash into the pool. And in that moment, several things happened. 

The sphere of strange, electrical energy reached the university’s pool room, facing the city with giant wall-sized windows. 

And electricity crackled with a sort of cruel, raging intensity, forking through the glass windows that shattered into the pool.

And Percy floated in the pool, stunned and sleeping. 

 

“Whoa. Coach Hedge, it’s Percy Jackson.”

“What?”

A pause.

“That’s not possible, son. He’s the best swimmer on the team. He couldn’t have drowned.”

“Sir, look at his face. It’s him.”

A heavy silence, completed with a deep sort of exhale that suggested defeat.

“I can’t believe it,” the first voice said, sort of broken. “He’s the last person I would’ve expected to—to drown. He could take care of himself.”

“Misfortune strikes the young,” the coach said gruffly. “Listen, kid, I know, ah—I know that you looked up to Jackson. But now’s as good a time as any to understand that death takes us all. Why, I remember when I was serving in—“

“Sir!”

“What is it, kid?”

“I think he’s alive!”

“Don’t kid yourself, kiddo. He’s been floating in that pool for hours. Everything’s easier if you can accept your circumstances. Why, when I was your age—“

“I’m not kidding, sir. I think he’s alive!”

“Well, you’re welcome to apply CPR if you’d like to, kid. Maybe it’ll aid in your journey to acceptance. 5 stages of grief and all that.”

“Jackson!” 

Percy felt something hard and pressured and jerky on his chest, then lips against his and his mind went to Rachel, and then it felt like he was surfacing after diving—the Particle Accelerator exploding, falling in the pool, seizing up as the electricity struck him at his very core. He tried to move, sit up, and he felt himself vomiting water, but couldn’t control anything. He tried to open his eyes, but it was like he was too tired, and he couldn’t push his eyelids open. 

“He’s alive!” the voice was choked, and broke on the second word. Percy briefly registered the name _Nico_  before he was lost, and his awareness of his surroundings slipped away as if he was swimming deeper into the depths of someplace murky and muddied and ultimately impossible to tell which way was up.


	2. By Your Ancestry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I update every Thursday :)

* * *

_ "He’s got to be the one.” _

_ “Now, Annabeth. You don’t know that. For all we know, he could simply be in any regular coma. That Particle Accelerator did a number on everyone.” _

_ “He’s the one. I know he’s the one. He’ll save us all.” _

_ “Annabeth…” _

 

* * *

 

“Percy, can you hear me?”

Percy felt his eyelids being poked and for a moment his vision returned, and a blonde girl, pretty and frantic-looking, hovered over him. 

“Can you hear me? Can you see me? Do you know anything about the lightning thief?”

Percy’s mouth felt dry and leathery. “I… I don’t…”

A voice called from another room. “Annabeth!”

The girl’s eyes widened, and she closed his eyes by force. He tried to stay awake but he couldn’t control any of his muscles, and he felt his body relax into an infinite floating bliss. Rachel’s face floated in front of him, sleeping and white and freckled, hair fanned out in a red spray behind her. For some reason, the sight of her made him feel immensely sad.

 

* * *

 

“Jackson is waking up, Ms. Chase.”

“So help me, Beckendorf, if you’re pulling my leg again—”

“No, ma’am. Look at his vitals. He’s waking up.”

“Oh my—Percy? Percy, can you hear my voice? Have you checked his vitals out?”

“He’s doing all right, I think.”

Percy licked his lips, moving his head slightly. His senses seemed to bloom as he woke up more, and his eyes sprang open. He sat up, moving forward in a rush, and two strong hands stopped him. He looked around wildly, nearly flailing as he took in his surroundings. Next to his bed stood the white chick from before with soft-looking, blonde hair that was held back in a ponytail. She was holding a tablet and had an expression that was a mixture of concern and excitement. Even in the confusion, looking at her made him think of Rachel, which was even more puzzling. The hands holding him back were those of a tall, bulky young guy whose nametag— Percy was close enough to read—said “CHARLES BECKENDORF, ASST. INTERN”.

His mind was a whirl of questions, frantic and uncertain. 

“What…Where am I? Who are you guys?” Confusion gave way to anger. Something roiled in his head, and his jawbone ached as his vision cleared and he was able to focus on his surroundings. Something rattled in the back of the room, metallic-sounding like a pipe or a faucet, but Percy didn’t look. “What’s going on?” he asked, and the anger dissipated like smoke, fading as worry swelled in his heart— for Rachel, for himself, for waking up in a strange bed—he looked around. The room was small, clean, sanitary-looking. An IV was hooked into his elbow crook and without a thought, he yanked it out. The blonde girl yelped, the intern shouted, and he stared stupidly at his arm as the intern began to press a cloth to the drip of blood that began to throb from the needle’s insert.

Before Percy knew it, the two had tightly wound bandages around his arm, and told him to make his elbow straight so that the blood wouldn’t pool into a bruise. 

“Right,” he managed. “Wait, why’d you have it in my arm in the first place?”

The blonde straightened her coat, which was white like a doctor would wear. “Mr. Jackson,” she cleared her throat, fixing him with a hard stare with two startlingly gray eyes. “What exactly do you last remember?”

His throat felt crusty and sore, like it hadn’t been used in a while. He cleared it nervously, darting a glance over at the assistant intern, who just stared back sternly. 

“I…” he cleared his throat, glancing back at the blonde. “I remember…” He bent his head forward, rubbing his temples. “I went swimming…”

He sensed the blonde—was she a doctor? it would make sense, since she was wearing a white coat—throwing a meaningful look at the other guy. 

He closed his eyes and tried to remember, really tried. “I was swimming… And I saw this beam of light in the sky. The Particle Accelerator, you know.”

“Do I,” the guy muttered in the corner. The doctor hushed him. 

“And I… got out? And looked out the window.” he inhaled sharply. “It was insane. I’ve never seen anything like it before. This—this sphere of energy, almost like a globe or a dome, you know? Like, you know when in school they tell you how the universe is constantly expanding? And sometimes there’ll be like a huge sphere they’ll show you that expands like a balloon. That’s what it was doing.” He looked up, his face imploring. “What happened? I must have passed out.”

The doctor looked at him, all iron eyes and arched eyebrows. “You should be dead. Nobody survives getting struck by lightning in a pool. You should have scars, burns, lacerations, something. The most you had was a ruptured ear drum. Would you like to explain why?”

Percy stared at her and then at Beckendorf and back at her. Was she trying to imply that he was to blame for his injuries?

Beckendorf began to say something, but Percy interrupted. “Um, excuse me—did you say that I got struck by lightning?” 

She tightened her face and walked a little closer to Percy’s bed, taking it one step at a time. “You… got struck by lightning, like I said,” she said, her voice sounding slightly restive. “You were found floating in the pool at the university that you attend.” she couldn’t hold his gaze. “The authorities tried to notify your mother, but they haven’t been able to get a hold of her. They tried to reach your girlfriend—“

“Who are you guys?” asked Percy.

The doctor glanced at Beckendorf, as if for support, and Percy wondered if they were a couple. 

“We’re interns,” she said. “For Doctor Chiron Brunner. He’s the founder of Sanguis Institute.”

“I’ve never heard of an institute by that name before,” Percy interrupted.

“We’re small and little known,” the doctor admitted. “I’ve been working here for two years now, and we were studying the possible negative effects of the Particle Accelerator that S.T.A.R. Labs when the Particle Accelerator exploded. Thousands of people were killed or injured by the blast.”

Percy’s heart went still, and he guessed that his face had gone slate-gray, because the doctor paused and glanced at him. His mouth felt dry. “Rachel was protesting outside the building.”

The blonde girl looked sorry. “Was she your girlfriend?”

He felt numb. 

"There were... a lot of people who were injured and killed in the explosion," she said gently.

His eyes felt hot and liquidy. He swallowed thickly and looked at his hands. 

“We’ve been waiting for you to wake up for a long time,” she added, sounding nervous but determined. “You’ve been asleep for quite a while, Mr. Jackson.”

He stared at her, glassy-eyed. “What?”

“Nine months, to be exact. You’ve been in a coma ever since the Accelerator exploded. Now that you’re awake, Dr. Brunner will definitely want to talk with you.” she fidgeted.

“You should stay in here and recuperate while your body recovers,” said Beckendorf. 

Percy stared, his eyes watery and his mouth dry. He made a noise of affirmation, and stared at his sheets. 

As the two began to leave the room, Percy spoke up. His voice was shaky. “My mom,” he said. His jaw ached. “Can you find out what happened to her?”

“What’s her name? Where does she live?” asked Ms. Chase.

Percy struggled to remember for a moment, and then the name came to him. “Sally Jackson. She’s in the penitentiary.” He barely registered the slight widening of her eyes, but she nodded briskly, spun around, and marched out. 

_If she’s all right_ —he could barely think of her being hurt or killed without feeling like a broken dam— _she’s going to be so worried_. He leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes. Rachel’s face swam into his mind’s eye—laughing, grinning, yelling, spitting, grimacing, with closed eyes and open eyes, teeth showing as she laughed, small quiet smiles. They built louder and louder until he felt like he was going to scream with loss. Freckles, small and peppered, flecked on her face and standing stark against her pale white skin. Shouting abuse at her computer, shouting at the world for being messed up during her protests, gentle hands, jeans splattered with paint and carelessness, it just kept increasing until a raw scream tore through his throat and he bent forward, clutching his bed and then hugging himself, just trying to stay tethered to this earth. _Rachel_. Gone. It wasn’t real. It _wasn’t_ real.

The door burst open and Beckendorf rushed in. “What’s going on?” he said, looking alarmed.

Blood roared in Percy’s head, and tears blinded him. 

“Oh…” the intern swore. 

His jaw ached, and he could feel saliva collecting in his mouth. _Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone._  

Her voice was wry and low as she teased him for adding blue flavoring to his pudding.

_Gone_.

Her eyes were wide, blindingly green, as he closed the distance and kissed her for the first time.

_ Gone. I can handle this. _

“Mr. Jackson, are you going to be okay?” Beckendorf said awkwardly from the doorway.

Percy dry-heaved, and dropped forward into a fetal position on the bed. Sobs ripped through his chest as he tried to breathe, but it didn’t seem possible. His heart was literally hurting, literally panging, and it felt as though an anvil was sitting on it.

“I—I can’t breathe,” Percy managed. 

Rachel’s hair, wrathful and red, highlighted with gold, fanned in a circle on her pillow. How silky it felt when he stroked it.

_Gone_.

“I can’t do this,” Percy gasped, and there was a tug somewhere behind his navel as he let go of some kind of control in his head, something that had been pressured from the moment he’d woken to explode. 

And that was when the pipes in the back of the room exploded. 


End file.
